It is axiomatic that the attribute of being rational is what sets humans apart from other animals. Ration is defined as being based on reason or logic.  It is systematic application of our mental faculties. Rational behavior is mostly exhibited in humans by the way we think, reason, and make judgment. You can never find a gathering of dogs or monkeys huddled together thinking about their history, examining their present and projecting their future. Only humans engage in this kind of activity. This ability is what makes humans human and the inability is what makes animals animal.

If being rational is what differentiates us from animals, why do we humans engage in willful political irrationality? Broadly speaking, political rationality is very costly. It requires a lot of effort to be rational. It requires effort to overcome biases. If you are rational, you always put your belief system at the risk of being changed and that is very costly. People accept costs only when they can see that benefits exceed the costs. However, in a democracy, the expected result of an individual being politically rational is always negligible. 

I am not writing this to convince you that other people are irrational and need to be dismissed. No. I would like you to reflect on yourself to see whether you have some irrational biases, tendencies so that you could hopefully correct them.

While being ignorant and irrational may serve your self-interest, it puts a serious risk and challenge to the society as a whole. If a large number of people in the society are irrational, then the society is likely to suffer from that irrationality. For example, if you have selfish ignorant citizens, then you are going to have selfish ignorant leaders.

Our biggest problem in Kenya is not joblessness, poverty, hunger, terrorism or insecurity; it is the problem of human irrationality on politics, economics and sociology; especially on how politics, economics and sociology are intertwined. Politics influences economics and economics determines our sociology. Most often, most of us - Kenyans, are decidedly not rational about political issues and hence we suffer bad economic and social conditions. Forming political beliefs and decisions in an irrational manner is like clinging to a talisman to save you from Ebola. It is stupid. We need to do something about combating our political irrationality. The best place to start by admitting that you may have irrationality.

I have attempted to list probing questions that, either individually or in a combination, can help you identify if you are being irrational:

a) Do you find yourself always becoming angry during a discussion, especially on a particular topic, person or belief? This is a signal that you have certain strongly held biases that are preventing you from being open and objective on the matter in discussion.

b) Do you have a strong opinion about a subject, belief, topic or person even before acquiring relevant facts, empirical evidence? Think about it. What is the point of having a baseless strong opinion about something that you know so little or know nothing about? 

c) Related to (b), does your opinion fail to change or improve even when you get new and credible evidence, facts, information? This could be a problem of indoctrination or dogmatism, where you only assimilate any new information to work for your previous held position and discard anything that challenges your opinion or belief.

d) Do you find yourself seeking facts, evidence, and information from sources you know will agree or validate your position or held belief system? This is because you prefer to reinforce your irrationality.

e) Do you find yourself thinking that people, who disagree with you, whatever their number, are evil? All of the above accounted for; it is very misleading to believe that a huge number of people can be evil just because they disagree with your opinion or belief system on a matter.

f) Do you find yourself disagreeing with experts on issues where the experts clearly know more than you do? You are ‘ignorantly vulgar’; which means you are the type of people that say so much about what they know so little or nothing about.

In conclusion, political irrationality seems normal to us humans because rationality is very expensive - in the sense that it sometimes prevents us humans from believing whatever we want to believe and threatens us to keep changing our belief systems. Dare to be rational and amenable to change and see what happens to you, your family and your country.

If you want to see things differently, then you need to reclaim what sets you apart from animals - ration. It is your God-given right to be rational about everything.  It is important that you start acting, behaving and living like a rational being. This is the only sure remedy to our biggest human problem – irrationality. The day majority of us become rational about ourselves, our family, our public affairs, our politics and the cost benefit of our irrationality that is the day we shall start changing everything including changing our country for better.

By George Nyongesa

The author [email protected]  is an activist who comments on a range of topics in politics, law, human rights and governance.